NWACC Instructional Technology Roundtable 2025
Access Granted: Rethinking Learning with Accessibility, AI, and Instructional Design
November 5-7, 2025
Courtyard City Center
550 SW Oak St
Portland, OR 97204
Wednesday, November 5
4:30 Check-in begins – Meet and Greet at the hotel – Conference Level
Drinks & snacks
5:30 Welcome & Dinner – Park Ballroom
6:30 Keynote
Awakening Superpowers: Human-Centered AI for Teaching and Learning – Scott James, Professor and Distance Education Coordinator, Santiago Canyon College
AI isn’t a shortcut—it’s an accessibility engine and ability amplifier. Scott will demonstrate how removing barriers and busywork helps students—especially learners with disabilities and neurodivergent learners—thrive. We’ll tour practical approaches using edtech and AI to jump-start motivation and executive function (getting started, chunking work, sustaining focus). We’ll also explore custom chatbots for instructional design and student support that amplify faculty capacity and help every learner go deeper, with strategies that mitigate bias, improve accuracy, respect copyright and promote transparency of information.
Thursday, November 6
8:00 Breakfast
8:30 Welcome & Getting on the Same Page – Park Ballroom
8:45 Speed Networking and CrowdSourcing – Park Ballroom
Get acquainted with your friends and colleagues at other institutions by discussing common issues around Access, AI and Instructional Design challenges.
10:00 Break
10:30 Breakout Sessions – Hands-on Session
Breakout A:
Teaching how to teach AI (Aurelio) – Park Ballroom
We will have a hands-on session showing you some generative AI basics. 3 years in?! Yes. We will explore how to create a low stakes environment that allows users of all backgrounds and expertise to explore and get comfortable with generative AI. You will experience the intro hands-on session itself, but also get a perspective on how this can help draw in AI skeptics, AI haters, and AI power users.
Breakout B:
STEM Accessibility 101 — Accessible Design for Complex Digital Resources (Michele Joy Bromley) – Laurelhurst
This presentation will provide an overview of best practices, considerations, and tools for generating accessible digital resources that feature math, music, and science content.
11:30 – 1:00 Lunch & Birds of a Feather
1:00 Breakout Sessions
Breakout A:
Building a Better Bot – intro to PlayLab part 1 hands-on (Scott James) – Park Ballroom
Bring your laptop and build a bot with me using PlayLab. This hands-on workshop introduces participants to PlayLab, an AI tool officially supported by the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, designed to help educators build customized study bots—no coding required! Participants will gain practical experience in creating AI-powered bots tailored to instructional, student support, and administrative needs. Through guided activities, attendees will design, test, and deploy their own bot while exploring how PlayLab can integrate Open Educational Resources (OER) to expand access to free, high-quality learning tools. We will also use strategies that help us mitigate bias, improve accuracy, and respect copyright and promote transparency of information. This session demystifies AI, providing a welcoming space to experiment and innovate. Walk away with a fully functional bot and the confidence to explore AI’s role in education!
Breakout B:
Digital Accessibility Validation — Automated and Manual Testing Techniques (Michele Joy Bromley) – Laurelhurst
This presentation will cover accessibility validation checkpoints for most digital environments and include a brief introduction to manual testing best practices with screen reading software.
2:15 Break
2:30 Breakout Sessions
Breakout A:
PlayLab AI Hands-on part 2 (Scott James) – Park Ballroom
Breakout B:
Accessibility At Your Institution: Current Status & Future Plans – Laurelhurst (or NWACCo Award Design)
Share with colleagues your institution’s plans for meeting the new 2026 ADA Title II Web accessibility standards, which include WCAG 2.1 AA. Who is leading communications, what tools have you purchased to make the tasks easier, who is in charge of content remediation/faculty training? Is AI playing a role yet in making accessible materials? How are you addressing years of LMS course content copied forward each term and being given to new instructors? Come share your aggregate LMS statistics about your content and let’s talk strategies.
3:45 Break
4:00- 4:50 3 Minutes of Fame– Park Ballroom
5:30 – Optional Dinner with Colleagues
7:00 – Optional late-night drink @ Deschutes
Friday, November 8
8:00 Breakfast
8:30 Looking Ahead – Park Ballroom
NWACCo Award update
8:45 Plenary: Cool Tools Show & Tell – Park Ballroom –
Share in small and large groups and learn from colleagues the tools that make edtech and your work easier, shinier, and pedagogically effective!
9:45 Canvas Data dashboards – Follow-up/next steps
10:15 Break
10:30 Plenary Session: – Park Ballroom
“It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” – AI and Accessibility’s Impact on Instructional Technology and Higher Education
Join us for a collaborative discussion exploring how artificial intelligence and accessibility are reshaping the landscape of instructional technology and higher education. Drawing inspiration from REM’s iconic refrain, this session acknowledges that while these changes may represent the “end of the world as we know it” in our field, we can navigate this transformation with creativity and community.
11:20 Circling Back
11:30 Adjourn